Monday, October 1, 2012

Happy No D Day!!!!
No D Day is a wonderful event created by my fantastic friend George. While we still do everything we need to do to take care of ourselves, we take a day off from talking, tweeting, FBing and blogging about D. We take the opportunity to share other parts of our lives, because there is a lot more to us!! Thank you, George, for encouraging us to explore the other parts of our lives!

So today, I’m talking about parakeets. You see, on any given day I can walk into my backyard and see green parakeets flying around. Nope, I don’t live in South America. I live in New England. Crazy, right? But it’s true. There is a large community of monk parakeets living right here in Connecticut.

Parakeet in my backyard. Not the best picture, but those suckers fly fast!!

When I first bought my house and learned of these birds, I thought it was the coolest thing. I was so excited every time I caught a glimpse of one. But over the years my love for these birds has gone south. (They should actually go south too, back home where the belong!!)

These birds are LOUD!!!! Like screech-and-screech-and-screech-until-you-want-to-stab-knitting-needles-into-your-ears loud. The little bastards winged creatures build HUGE nests on our utility poles, which often causes power outages. And they are just kind of gross. When I’m in my home office I can hear them in the pine trees, munching away. It is really creepy.

Over all I do guess it’s kind of cool that exotic South American birds live in my backyard. It’s neat that although there are dozens of stories floating around about how these monk parakeets came to live on the Connecticut coast nobody really knows for sure how they got here. It’s still a bit exciting to look out the window and see a pretty green parakeet fly by. But mostly, those loud little bastards birds are just annoying!!

HA! I love it! Having been to Costa Rica, just a year ago, I have to say that living in the tropics would be difficult due to all the noise. I never would have thought that parakeets would be so loud! little bas...darlings.

Parakeets freak me out, so do Love birds and parrots for that matter. I like egrets though, they make me smile when I see them in the back bays and they always welcomed me back home no matter how long I was away.But I digress, back to the parakeets - I think they have to be related to the Parrots Brooklyn: http://www.brooklynparrots.com/2005/03/what-are-wild-parrots-doing-in.html

How would you like to live with 7 large parrots in your home? I do and have for over 25 years. I guess someone once released/lost a couple of Monk Parakeets in your area and they just adapted to the environment and reproduced... like rabbits! I'm a bird lover and also a Type 1 Diabetic for the last 35 years. You will learn to coexist with the birds and hopefully, they'll win you over one day.

I Am . . .

Karen Graffeo

I'm a Knitter living with Type 1 Diabetes. I'm not a medical professional nor am I giving medical advice - I'm just a girl sharing my personal thoughts and experiences with diabetes. I live in New England with my wonderful husband, my adorable cat, and lots and lots of yarn.